


Metà di voi qua vadano | Half of you go that way | Que la moitié d'entre vous aille par là

by FLWhite



Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Character Bleed, Don Giovanni - Freeform, F/M, M/M, RPF, Realism Imane Realism, i wish i knew how to quit you, let me sip my metalepsis juice in peace, marche des fiertés, mild to moderate pining with scattered sexual tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 12:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19701742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite
Summary: For a moment he loses himself, and when he looks down at his fingers and Charlie’s clasped together on the arm of the seat he feels not her eyes crinkling at him, but another’s, blue darkened to black in the dimness, and it’s another hand under his, longer, broader, knuckles papery-dry and each gently downy with a few sun-bleached hairs.





	Metà di voi qua vadano | Half of you go that way | Que la moitié d'entre vous aille par là

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the green ray](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454833) by [zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi). 



> “Ooh,” I said, reading @zetaophiuchi’s story. “Ooh, I wanna do a companion piece.” Then I somehow wrote 2500 words.  
> *  
> And I thought having bilingual titles was pretentious! But no, I have attained a new level of pretension just for y'all. Trying to use mouseover text here; the hover text are my own rendering, with the aid of M. Google; for the full libretto of this aria, "Ah! taci inguisto core" ("Quiet, unjust heart"), as it is probably usually printed, see [here](https://www.opera-arias.com/mozart/don-giovanni/ah-taci-ingiusto-core/). Thanks for reading and as always, let me know if you liked this with a comment and kudos. Bises.

The soprano in slate-gray grips the edge of the gilt window, so beautifully colored that it’s easy to forget that it’s merely plywood underneath. She turns to the audience. _Numi, che strano affetto, mi si risveglia in petto! _ Her dark red-painted mouth twists in supplication and suffering.

Axel squints at the libretto spread over his knees. He has no Italian to speak of—that’s all Charlène—but even he can tell it’s a pretty damn loose translation. But the music is lovely and, this close to the stage, each infinitesimal slide of the singers’ eyes, each curl of their fingers, is visible. And these are, of course, incredible. He imagines having sat here in the muggy Venetian gloaming at the first prèmiere, two hundred and twenty-seven years ago.

 _Discendi, o gioia bella, vedrai che tu sei quella che adora l'alma mia, pentito io sono già_, the baritone warbles from a corner up at his lover, clothed in his servant’s drab; the hapless servant, meanwhile, wipes invisible sweat from under the rich burgundy brim of his hat, his hands twisting with nerves around the edge of his cape.

For a moment he loses himself, and when he looks down at his fingers and Charlie’s clasped together on the arm of the seat he feels not her eyes crinkling at him, but another’s, blue darkened to black in the dimness, and it’s another hand under his, longer, broader, knuckles papery-dry and each gently downy with a few sun-bleached hairs.

 _Ah credimi, o m'uccido! Idolo mio, vien qua! _ The ersatz Don Giovanni’s knees wobble, his head droops, and he shuts his eyes as though suppressing a sob; the real nobleman, still tucked in his nook, titters. The strings swell.

Axel swallows, and it’s Charlie there again, hair falling prettily over her ear, smile gone a little stiff; he’s been staring at her like she’s an apparition. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he whispers back. He squeezes her hand.

*

As the lights come up, he excuses himself and darts into the same bathroom, in fact the same bathroom stall, as he’d run into during the intermission. Then, he’d posted the picture of Charlie, standing among the soft red seats before the show began, with a mischievous caption. Now, again sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, he flicks through the Likes, already numbering in the thousands, with an anxiety that he hates himself a little for indulging. Nothing yet.

Just in case, he searches the Comments too. Nothing. Only Petra with a chain of heartmarks, and a text from Tom, bracketed by winking emojis: _lots of pics of Charlie lately, things are really heating up huh_?

He ignores the message.

It’s not surprising, this silence. Surely Maxence has better things to do than look at his phone, at the moment. _Or not_ , a treacherous voice whispers in him, the voice he thinks of as Lucas’s. _He posted that story just an hour ago_. Axel looks at the blurry picture again, freezing it with his thumb. It’s a girl he doesn’t know, a room he doesn’t recognize. A birthday cake that must’ve made Maxence squeal with delight, for its adorably tiny diameter.

No, surely. Much better things to do. And him too, him too. He slides the phone into his pocket and flushes. _Liar,_ says Lucas, sour, jealous. _Liar._

*

The first time he’d avoided Maxence’s kiss, that one sunny afternoon last autumn, had been the hardest. For an elite model, Maxence always had a face that Axel found devastatingly simple to read. The shadow that flickered in Maxence’s slow blink, the stutter of his jaw, had been agony to see. He had put his cheek beside Maxence’s, trying not to breathe too loudly, and waited for what seemed like a year before Maxence completed the _bise_ and they switched sides, a little clumsily.

 _No_ , the voice had shouted, pained.

 _I am not you_ , he had shouted back internally. Externally, he’d smiled as widely and innocuously as possible. Good thing that Maxence hadn’t been really meeting his eyes, anyway.

 _It’s his first role_ , Axel had reminded himself and Lucas, again. They’d sat there at the little table over their scalding coffees, talking emptily of plans, of the weather, of a new Indian restaurant that’d opened near Lycée Dorian, Axel trying to resist Lucas’s impulse to pout.

 _And so intense_. He had felt obscurely responsible for Maxence the entire time, shooting, and he has continued to feel responsible after. Responsible for what, exactly, he still does not know, and he does not ask himself.

*

It got easier. A body forgets if the mind is willing; if not willing, then at least putting in an effort.

By the spring, he can have Maxence at his feet without feeling his throat narrow, his breath quicken, his eyes dart almost involuntarily here and there like creatures cornered by Maxence’s blue stare. He can touch Maxence without a shudder, and smile broadly and steadily no matter how softly Maxence’s hair falls into his eyes, or how many shirt-buttons are undone above Maxence’s breastbone. But he still notices all these things, or Lucas does.

It doesn’t happen as much anymore, but sometimes he still dreams Lucas’s dreams. Dreams that he knows have to be Lucas’s. Dreams filled with the remembered friction of skin on skin, lips on stubble, fingertip on fingertip, with memories of a body that felt like it should be rumpling his paisley bedsheets right there beside him when he opens his eyes.

It’s weird. Not quite disturbing, but close. He puts on Baptiste Beaulieu and takes him off within half an hour, along with the makeup and the glasses and that awful checked button-up, buttoned all the way; though he’s been becoming Adrien LePage for two years, he can still strip back to himself as quickly as he shucks off the white shirt and pants. And yet Lucas sits complacently within him like a small effervescent tablet that turns out to be a lump of stone, resistant to all attempts to dissolve him harmlessly away.

*

 _Well, of course,_ his mother says, making him some eggs, a couple of days before the next season is confirmed. All of them are losing sleep over it, all of them are emoji-ing up a storm about it on the cast group chat, but the dreams are coming hard and fast for Axel and it’s not like he can really discuss those with anyone. His eyes feel tender, swollen with sleeplessness. _Of course it’s hard for you to put Lucas down, he’s meant so much to you. And David and Niels made you a part of him, haven’t you been saying?_ _How you like to joke things away._

Then he makes a joke, a poor one, about the sleeping pills she’d long ago mistaken for his multi-vitamins: _can you put some caffeine tabs in these eggs today_? And he’d not brought it up with her again. 

*

There are now times when he and Maxence don’t talk for several days at a stretch. Not so much as a GIF between them. Before yesterday, the record was nearly five days, as he ricocheted between New York and home and packing for Italy. The entire last month has felt like a constant and deeply Sisphyean round of packing and unpacking, in fact, and he looks forward to ending it in Paris, under the sun. With Maxence.

Just to catch up, he thinks at himself, or at Lucas, squeezing onto the Métro at quarter-past-ten, already sweating. It’s too hot and too chaotic to ride Léon.

Just to say hi, he thinks, being disgorged at the Montparnasse station and finding himself having to literally hold onto his hat amidst the eager, sweating crowd. Give an interview. Dance a little. Take a photo.

Several voices at once call his name. He does not recognize it, because at the same moment, his eyes, combing the sea of faces, snag on a (terrible) hat, a (also terrible) shirt, a (terrible by contagion) pair of rose-colored sunglasses, and he forgets to reply as a bomb of silence detonates in his ears. He just stares and stares and stares. Maxence, giggling at something Coline has said, turned three-quarters to Axel, does not notice.

Laughing uproariously, Edouard and Coline gallop toward him and toss their arms around him, and he is squeezed back into himself. All over his neck and back, his skin tingles as sweat begins to bead. 

*

“Since I came to Paris, yeah, six years, I’ve come to Pride with friends,” Maxence is saying while rolling up his left sleeve a little more tightly, and Axel—or is it Lucas?—watches the catch of the fabric on Maxence’s softly gleaming forearm, swallowing.

All he can think is that Maxence is looking at him, bright and blue, too bright and too blue, and that he wishes there were a way to inconspicuously jam those stupid pink sunglasses back onto that slightly inclined head. For his own and everyone’s safety.

Maxence tips his chin up minutely, raising both eyebrows, and Axel realizes that they’re being asked a question. It’s nice to know that his old schoolroom skill of answering a question he’s only half heard still serves him; he launches into a flood of words, letting their momentum tear him at last free of Maxence’s gaze. But then he hesitates, groping, and like a hapless iron filing before a supermagnet, he’s again looking at Maxence, who is nodding while he listens and at the same time is looking down while tying the loose tails of his shirt into a small knot. A little bit of tongue shows between his lips.

“To—to—to carry the message,” he gets out at last, as Maxence finishes the knot and regards him again from under half-lowered lashes. “We have the right to love, we have the right to be lost, we have to be proud of loving whoever you want.” It all comes in a great rush. “A lot of people told us we had no right to be ‘godfathers’.” Maxence’s mouth is firmly set, but Eliott’s eyes might be smiling at him.

 _I love you_ , Lucas whispers.

And his mouth, barely under his own command, hurries on: “And how do they know if at some point in our lives we didn’t love a man, or if we won’t love a man at another point?” Maxence is for certain smiling at him now, eyes and mouth both.

In that moment he decides that it’s all right, it’s fine, it’s okay; they’ll be together again in September, and it’s not a bad thing, maybe, to have Lucas sitting here with him, within him, longing heart beating in time with his own. It’ll help, with the realism. With the show, with getting more seasons finalized.

And Eliott deserves to star—no, Maxence, he corrects himself, halfheartedly. The other half is vibrating with energy behind his sternum, like it’s just been struck by lightning. 

*

They don’t really touch each other at all as they trickle with the screaming crowds along the five kilometers that, under the infinitely hot sun, feel more like ten. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Maxence undo one button, then another, until the shirt, dampened by the mists of water at the cooling stations, hangs half-clinging, half-free. The shadow of an enormous rainbow-colored umbrella under which Maxence passes shades his face, briefly blurs his hat into a nest of streaky darkness. Suddenly there’s Eliott, or enough of him, at least, to make Axel hold his breath.

He fans himself furiously as they ooze their way over the Pont au Change, and, with the sensation of something melting inside him in the relentless heat, hams it up for several cameras in a row: he cackles when Maxence swipes at him, tries to speak Chinese, sticks out his tongue with his jaw sticking a little to Maxence’s and his arm flung around Maxence’s shoulders: once, twice, three times.

There’s another interview, at the end, but first he downs two more bottles of water. They are tepid while his blood is molten. _A shell_ , he says, shifting in his seat, his feet fidgeting under the table, too hot and too bursting with something unnameable to stay remotely still. _Lucas has this mask. The reality, it’s different._

Maxence talks about Eliott, about being a lover. It takes Axel eminent willpower to force himself, or Lucas, to blink while looking at Maxence while he speaks, to occasionally look away. He tries for a neutral, easy smile, punctuated with some silly faces and arched eyebrows, and once he pretends to start stripping off his shirt. He thinks he is doing a pretty good job of Axel Auriant at his finest.

But then Maxence’s voice, raised and rapid after his cigarette, takes on a raw edge over _free to be what we want_ , over _we fought for years_ , over _it just does not compute_. He can’t help leaning forward, his eyes so wide-open that he wonders if his eyeballs will fall out, at _Love each other for fuck’s sake_.

“Love each other,” he repeats, hoping that he is passing as himself.

*

In the long-shadowed and still-warm dusk they stagger finally away from the Place de la République, ostensibly both making for the Métro but neither interrupting their walk at the obvious stations.

They’re nearly halfway to the Seine again when Maxence asks, all of a sudden, “When are you going to take me to Disney Paris? Hein?”

Axel, who had been trying to moisten his mouth enough to speak, stutters, looking sideways and up. His feet practically squeal to a halt on the pavement. “You?” He sounds like he has recently swallowed a mouthful of glass. “Oh, Eliott.” _Oh, yes_. Reasonably, calmly, he says, “Message David and Niels.”

Lucas yells like a toddler in Axel’s ear, _A Mickey hat, a Mickey hat, Eliott would be so fucking adorable in a Mickey hat. Oh please, a Mickey hat._

 _Yeah, anything but that monstrosity he's got now,_ Axel concurs. He likes the wink that Eliott gives him so well that he continues the banter, even though he knows he’s close to the borderline, even though he can feel the sagging fence there starting to give way. The rusty chain-link is creaking under his hands. But somehow he no longer cares.

“Lucas has gained the courage to do many things since meeting you,” he says aloud, meaning _I love you_. There is a clanging crash inside his head: the delighted curl of Maxence’s mouth, unguarded, wide, is the last shove at the fence that tips it finally over.

Or maybe the last shove is the glimpse of the taut skin from clavicle to navel between the wrinkled edges of Maxence’s shirt, and the vision of the rest of that body, too, a little too thin, a little bit burned, shining wetly under a laughing blue sky.

Or maybe the last shove is the sweat-salt and tobacco-sweet of those lips, firm against Axel’s after they say their _see you_ s on a narrow corner curb, ignoring the pedestrian signal as it turns green, thirteen minutes later.

Lucas watches Eliott trot away into the summer evening, his shirt, now mostly dry, billowing; Axel puts his forefinger on his mouth without thinking and presses to preserve the kiss until the time comes for a new one to refresh it.


End file.
